Featured Image Credit: Suspilne Dnipro
Topics: Ukraine, Russia, World News
Niamh Shackleton
A Ukrainian soldier has detailed the harrowing abuse he allegedly endured while fighting for his country.
Ukraine has been embroiled in a devastating war with Russia since February 2022 which has so far claimed the lives of over 13,000 civilians and injured almost 34,000, says Statista.
Meanwhile, in the first 18 months of bloodshed around 500,000 Russian and Ukrainian soldiers were killed, the New York Times previously reported.
There have been rumours of torturous activities by Russian troops taking place, a theory that was backed when a Ukrainian journalist's body was allegedly returned to her home country without her internal organs.
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Now a Ukrainian soldier who survived his apparent torture has shared details about what happened.
33-year-old National Guardsman Vladislav is said to have had his throat cut and was left to die after being thrown into a pit alongside seven other soldiers.
Presuming they were all dead, the Russians allegedly threw garbage on top of the bodies to conceal them.
But Vladislav lived to tell the tale and, despite his serious injuries, he was able to crawl to safety and made it to a Ukrainian base after five days.
Now, Vladislav is sharing his story.
Speaking on his behalf to Ukrainian outlet Suspilne, Vladislav's wife Victoria detailed the horrifying things he experienced. Vladislav cannot speak so he wrote everything down in a diary.
Victoria said: "At first, they caught him alone, and then they took him to the basement, where there were completely different soldiers. There were two of them there, and these two were mocking them."
The capture occurred after his brigade lost control of a position near Pokrovsk a few weeks ago.
The men who were captured before Vladislav were said to be from intelligence and 'had their eyes gouged out, their lips cut off, their male organs cut off, their ears, [and] their noses'.
As to how Vladislav was able to escape after being thrown into the pit while his hands were tied, there was a broken bottle he was able to access to cut his hands free.
Vladislav's doctor also spoke to the news outlet and explained that the soldier's wounds had begun to rot because he'd lost so much blood.
Vladislav was taken to one of the medical facilities in the Dnipropetrovsk region in extremely serious condition on August 17.
He's since undergone surgery and doctors are doing everything they can to ensure that the soldier will be able to talk and breathe on his own again.